Best Visual Effects is a fun Oscar category. Historically speaking, at least. I googled this award for like two minutes and was delighted at what I found. Just the growth of the award as technical capabilities have excelled. It’s fascinating. Just a little over a decade ago, the category only held three nominees. In some years, the category wasn’t even a competition; they just gave it to a film.

Best Cinematography is shaping up to be an exciting, if not predictable, category in 2018. A couple of bits of trivia. Roger Deakins, the front-runner, has been nominated for Oscars 14 times in the past and has never won. The man essentially invented the way movies are color graded today, so he kind of deserves the recognition.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the nomination for Rachel Morrison for Mudbound marks the first time in Academy history that a woman has been nominated for Best Cinematography. I remember at some point in my academic career I was given a statistic that the number of employed female DPs in Hollywood only make up about 3% of DPs (don’t quote me on this exact number). It is surprising how the world of cinematographers is still a boy’s club, and thus this nomination for Morrison is a pretty big deal.

With the two sound categories—Sound Mixing and Sound Editing—holding the same five nominees, it is tempting to give the win for both awards to the same film. While usually I would warn against this notion, this year the possibility for that happening is certainly there.

The Best Visual Effects category has been narrowed down by the Academy to 10 films. Makes my job easier, sure, but even without the shortlist I think these five films would be the ones with the nominations.

There are plenty of well-shot movies that come out every year. 2017 was no different, which makes narrowing down just five movies for Best Cinematography an arduous task. But I’m going to do it anyway!